A Lesson In Teamwork

I must say, Jonathan's soccer season before this week had been rather disappointing. Although the team had managed to keep the opponents' goals down to a minimum of 1 or 2, they had played 4 games without scoring a single goal. Jeff and I, and many other parents, had begun to notice that our players would just stop and wait after getting only so far down the field instead of following the ball all the way to the goal. Also, they would all run after the ball so no one would be waiting to be passed to down at our goal. So they never really got close enough to kick it in.

This all changed lately. Our assistant coach just had neck surgery, so Jeff stepped in to help. He came up with a brand new strategy which spread our players out so they could pass the ball down the field. Two of our players stay on our end of the field waiting for the ball, one mid-field and one right in the middle of our goal box.

Last night was our team's first time to really make this work. Two quarters passed and our team was still trying to get the hang of it since they had never had time to practice it this way. The score was still 0 to 0. At this point, the coach asked Jeff who he thought would score if put right by the goal. Jeff, knowing his son would never disappoint him, told him "If you put Jonathan down there, I guarantee he will get the ball in the goal." So Jonathan was put in to make his Daddy proud. Not only did he score 1 goal, but he kicked 2 goals right past the goalie. It made for an exciting and victorious game. The final score was 2 to 0.

After high-fiving and loving on Jonathan, he said this: "I was the only one on the team who scored any goals!" As we assured him of how proud we were of him for playing hard, we used this as an opportunity to teach him about teamwork. We explained to him that it was his foot that actually kicked the winning goals, but without the feet of his teammates that ball would have never made it down to him. In reality, it took the whole team to work together to make the goals.

Sorry we have no pictures. We forgot the camera!